ECC board approves new deal for faculty
Most Elgin Community College instructors are in line for modest raises under a new three-year deal ratified Monday.
Tensions had escalated over a proposed salary freeze for the faculty, and instructors were prepared to walk out in mid-April before the sides reached agreement.
The ECC board ratified that agreement Monday morning, one day after the union, which represents more than 500 part-time and full-time instructors at the college, approved the deal.
Under the new contract, full-time instructors will receive increases for each additional year of teaching experience as well as academic credit they earn. Part-timers get 2-percent raises, or 1-percent bumps plus compensation for experience and academic credit, depending on which category they are in. Base salaries will not change.
Instructors who are at the end of the salary schedule, meaning they have more than 20 years of experience, will get raises of $1,000 each year or a $1,000 yearly contribution into a pretax retirement fund.
The starting salary for full-time instructors at ECC is $46,213. Assistant professors make about $65,000, associate professors make about $80,000 and full professors make about $95,000.
The ECC board originally wanted to take away raises for experience and credit hours, which would have meant a true salary freeze, but these were restored in the last few bargaining sessions, a union spokesman said.
“It’s not a good deal for the faculty,” union spokesman Gary Christenson said. “Under the situation we have in place in the college right now, it was the best this team could do without going through a strike.”
Christenson said the lengthy talks strained relations between instructors and the college leadership.
“There was a constant message that came from the board that faculty aren’t valued,” Christenson said. “I don’t recall a time when the board tried to take away so many fundamental parts of the contract.”
ECC board Chairman Robert McBride could not be reached for comment.
Under the contract, faculty members will have to chip in more for their health insurance. In the first year, full-timers will have to shoulder 5 percent of their premiums; that figure rises to 7.5 and 10 percent in years two and three. The college previously paid the entire cost of full-time instructors’ premiums. Part-timers do not receive college-paid health insurance.
The college estimates faculty members will receive a 2.39-percent annual increase in overall compensation annually, which will cost ECC an additional $3.15 million over three years.
The contract applies retroactively to Jan. 1, 2011, and runs through Dec. 31, 2013. Faculty have been working on an expired contract since the beginning of the year. Contract talks began in October 2010.
Christenson said it took so long to schedule a vote because the final document was still being assembled. Although it has been past practice to release the vote totals, he declined to do so this time.
“I told my journalism students, ‘You always want to get the vote when you do stories like this,’ but in this case, we’re not doing that,” he said.
Five ECC trustees were present for Monday’s ratification vote. Trustees Robert McBride, Donna Redmer, John Duffy and John Dalton voted for the agreement. Trustee Clare Ollayos recused herself because her husband is a part-time instructor at ECC, according to a college spokesman.